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Saturday, April 19, 2014

Garden 4.19.14

Finally! I spent several hours in the garden this morning. The Hubs tilled about half the garden for me. Oh, and Thursday evening I planted 3 Victoria Rhubarb plants.

I prepped the seed potatoes; I cut them into smaller pieces so each piece has an eye. They are drying out a bit on newspaper on our dining room table. Hopefully they will go in the ground this evening or tomorrow morning.

I planted golden shallots, red and yellow onions, mesclun mix, dill, Cylindra beets, Ruby Queen beets, and Tyee spinach. I also planted a first sowing of Top Crop green beans, and Sugar Sweet Pumpkins and Sweeter Yet cucumbers. I also planted a mix of castor beans, bachelor buttons, zinnias, Shasta daisies, and coreopsis.

Then I raked/hoed areas to plant tomatoes and the potatoes.

The rest of the garden will have peppers, corn, more green beans, winter and summer squash, more cucumbers, melons, tomatillos, carrots and more herbs.

This year instead of planting short rows across the garden, we are trying long rows that go the length of the garden (minus the area with the flowers, strawberries and asparagus). We are trying long rows so the Hubs can rototill the aisles - this will help keep weeds down, and will keep me from having to bend over and pull weeds when I'm super pregnant.

Earlier this week I started having second thoughts about such a large garden while pregnant. Then I decided to move forward with it. A garden gives me alone-time so I can think by myself, it gets me out in the sunshine for several hours each week, and it provides exercise (don't believe me? Try hoe-ing for 30 minutes, or bending over to weed or harvest. It's hard work!).

The fruit trees all appear to be growing, with the exception of the golden apricot that I planted in the fall of 2012. It is slow to set on leaves or blooms compared to the other apricot tree. So much for having multiple varieties that will polinate each other - kind of impossible when only one tree is blooming! The grapes, raspberries and blueberries are all coming back. And the blackberries I transplanted from the farm are growing. I am still looking for golden raspberries (a request by the Hubs) because the bare root ones I ordered from Burgess never sprouted. They even sent replacement plants and those didn't sprout.

The flower bulbs are also blooming, and the peonies are growing (although I don't expect them to bloom for another year).